Comic consciousness

The Scenes From A Multiverse from the 26th has Snake One suddenly, and comically, conscious of the limitations of his body for performing his duties under Snake Leader in the Spacespider Colonies :

(#1)

This casts Snake One into a downward spiral of doubt and confusion.

Snakes and worms are at the extreme end of problematic creatures in Cartoonland, yet by convention they manage to function (by some sort of comic magic, or by using their tail end as an appendage) without any digits at all. One step up are creatures with appendages (a spider’s legs, an octopus’s arms) that can be reconfigured as digit-equivalents (and are often visually presented that way). A further step up is animals with digits (like a dog’s toes) that are easily recognized as the equivalent of fingers, even if they don’t function that way in real life. Finally, there are animals (primates in general and some other creatures) with an opposable digit.

So my advice to Snake One is: Use your tail, man! You’ll be able to press those buttons and flip those switches like a pro!

Bonuses. First, from SFAM’s Jon Rosenberg, the offer of a t-shirt with this arresting cartoon (Squid vs. Wienermbile), which I somehow had missed:

(#2)

This introduces a note of phallicity. Well, actually two, since the head of a squid has struck many people as distinctly phallic — an association that Mitchell Mitch has made more explicit in this design on the site threadless: